After spending nearly three months in Munster and Connaught, Sidney came to the conclusion that they did not contain the seeds of reformation within themselves. Ormonde indeed did not lack ability; but he was absent, and likely to be absent, and his work could not be done by deputy. He summed up the qualifications of the other great lords in a few pithy sentences. ‘The Earl of Desmond, a man both void of judgment to govern and will to be ruled. The Earl of Clancare I suppose willing enough to be ruled, but wanteth force and credit to rule. The Earl of Thomond, the most imperfect of all the rest; hath neither wit of himself to govern, nor grace or capacity to learn of others. The Earl of Clanricarde, equal in all good parts with the best of his coat of this country breed, both of good judgment to rule and also of himself of great humbleness to obey your Majesty and your laws, is yet so ruled by a putative wife, as oft times when he best intendeth she forceth him to do worst.’ It was of small avail that the Lord Roche’s country in Cork was pretty well managed, or that O’Shaughnessy, the son of him whom Henry VIII. knighted, should be an exception among the gentlemen of Galway. A President and Council for each province had been long advocated by Sidney, who reiterated his opinion that nothing else would be of any avail. He condemned, with becoming indignation, what an important public man had some years before called ‘the old and necessary policy of keeping the Irish by all possible means at war between themselves.’ If this cowardly system of fostering dissensions, lest quiet should bring unknown danger, were still persisted in, then he begged the Queen to choose some other minister. Ireland could only be reformed by justice, and by making it possible to practise the arts of peace.[124]
Death of Randolph. Fate of the Derry settlement.
After Randolph’s death the settlement at Derry went from bad to worse. The encampment had been made over the burying-ground, and the miasma did its work. The commissariat officer was afraid to send his vessel away for fear of weakening the garrison, every officer seeking a passage for his friends. Discipline could hardly be maintained, and there was great lack of necessaries. Storage room there was none, and the enfeebled men were daily harassed by bringing supplies from the ships. News seldom penetrated to that remote spot, whither ‘no man travels by which men might have some understanding before now. God send me, if it be His will, once into England, and there to beg my bread if I be not able to labour rather than here to be a lord.... I am weary of my life, and all for want of the colonel.’ Edward Saintloo was sent to take Randolph’s place, and the mere fact of there being a man in authority worked wonders. ‘Before, we were like godless people without a head or a guide.’ Saintloo brought some stores, but in bad order and partly spoiled by one of the vessels taking ground in the bay. ‘That which was saved hath come in an ill pickle, but yet are we glad of it, for our meal was almost done and our mills not able to grind so fast as we did eat. Sir, the provision of meal is not like London, for it is coarse meal, and was never bolted, but even as it came out of the mills, so packed into great cakes.’ Nothing could be bought but at exorbitant rates, and the new colonel calculated that, out of their pay of only 14s. a month, the men had to pay 10s. 2d. for food, leaving only 3s. 10d. for clothing, wood, turf, bedding, straw, and other necessaries. To obtain provisions, and perhaps to put heart into his troops, he made a raid upon the O’Cahans, who still adhered to Shane, and brought off vast numbers of cattle. But the sickness continued, and soon there were but 200 able men out of 600. It was decided to remove the garrison to Coleraine or Strangford, but before measures could be taken the settlement had ceased to exist. The sparks from the forge, driven by a high wind, set fire to the magazine, which had once been a church, or part of a church, and thirty men were killed by the explosion. The survivors took what boats they could find, and the majority made their way to Carrickfergus. Some were driven ashore, and were hospitably treated by Tirlogh Luineach O’Neill. The Queen, seeing that the accident was by God’s ordinance, bore her loss well; but the devout natives maintained that St. Columba had appeared in the shape of a very large and particularly hairy wolf, that he had taken a good mouthful of sparks out of the blacksmith’s shop, and that he had then disgorged them into the magazine.[125]
The O’Donnells totally defeat Shane,
The evacuation of Derry left the road into Tyrconnel once more open, and Shane doubtless supposed that it was at his mercy. He advanced with a large force to the ford over the Swilly, now called Farsetmore, near Letterkenny. O’Donnell was in the neighbourhood, and hastily sent messengers to collect his friends. Sending the few horse at his disposal to skirmish with Shane’s vanguard, he drew his men, who did not exceed 400, into a strong position, and there addressed them; telling his clansmen that death was far preferable to the insults which they had of late years suffered at O’Neill’s hands. They at once marched to attack Shane’s camp, and found his men, who probably confided in their number, in a state of unreadiness. A great slaughter followed, and the O’Neills fled to the ford which they had crossed in the morning. But it was now high water, and of those who escaped the sword the greater number were drowned. Shane escaped in the confusion, crossed the Swilly a little higher up, and made his way into Tyrone. His loss was variously estimated at 1,300, and at 3,000, and he never collected another army. He at one time thought of appearing before Sidney with a rope round his neck and begging for mercy. What he did was to place himself in the power of the MacDonnells, of whom a strong force had just landed at Cushendun, under the command of Alexander Oge, who had come over at Sidney’s request, and who remained in communication with him. To him Shane now sent proposals for a permanent alliance against the English.[126]
who is killed by the Scots.
Alexander agreed to a meeting, and Shane, accompanied by the unfortunate countess, and by Sorley Boy, who was still his prisoner, directed his steps towards Red Bay. His escort was reduced to fifty horse. The Scots made a feast to welcome their visitor, and after dinner Shane’s secretary was accused of circulating the report that James MacDonnell’s widow was about to marry the man who had killed her husband. The secretary incautiously said that O’Neill was a meet partner, not only for their chief’s wife, but for Mary of Scotland, who was a widow at this time. Shane, who had been indulging as usual in wine or whisky, came up at the moment and took part in the altercation. The Scots drew their dirks, and almost cut him to pieces. The body was thrown into an old chapel hard by, and Captain Piers of Carrickfergus, who had all along plotted for this conclusion, managed to get possession of the head, which he sent, preserved in salt, to Sidney. Piers received 1,000 marks, the reward which Sidney had placed on the head, and the ghastly trophy was stuck on a pole over the gate of Dublin Castle, where it was seen by the historian Campion four years later. Shane’s entire body had been valued at 1,000l., 500l. being the sum promised by proclamation for simply killing him. The trunk was buried in the Franciscan monastery at Glenarm, and it is said that monks from Armagh came afterwards to claim it. ‘Have you,’ said the prior, ‘brought with you the remains of James MacDonnell, Lord of Antrim and Cantire, who was buried among strangers at Armagh?’ A negative answer was given, and the prior said: ‘While you continue to tread on the grave of James, Lord of Antrim and Cantire, know ye, that we here in Glenarm will trample on the dust of your great O’Neill.’[127]
Character of Shane O’Neill.
‘Shane the Proud,’ as his countrymen called him, was perhaps the ablest of Elizabeth’s Irish opponents. He intrigued at different times with Spain, with France, and with Scotland; but he received no foreign help. In practice he regarded the Pope as lightly as the Queen, but he saw clearly enough that it was his interest to pose as the Catholic champion. The Pope, however, had not yet excommunicated the Queen, nor was either France or Spain prepared to court the hostility of England. Scottish politicians thought it worth while to keep him in good humour, but mainly as a means of increasing their own value with Elizabeth. Alone he bore the brunt of the contest, and he must have cost the English Crown a sum altogether out of proportion to his own resources. Ware says that 3,500 soldiers were sacrificed in this service, and that it cost the Queen more than 147,000l. over and above all local imposts and all damage done to the country. Shane was cruel and tyrannical, and his moral character was as bad as possible, though not much worse than that of Clanricarde, or perhaps of some other chiefs in that rude age. He had an Oriental want of scruple about murdering inconvenient people, and he had no regard for truth. He is said to have been a glutton, and was certainly a drunkard. We are told that he used to bury himself in the ground to recover from his orgies, ‘by which means,’ says the chronicler, ‘though he became in some better plight for the time, yet his manners and conditions daily worse.’ The love of liquor probably caused his death. By far the most remarkable Irishman of his time, he cannot be regarded as in any sense a national hero. His ambition was limited to making himself supreme in Ulster. Had he been allowed to oppress his own province, and perhaps to levy some blackmail beyond its border, it is not likely that he would have troubled the Pale, or denied the titular sovereignty of England. Being such as he was, the vast majority of Irishmen probably rejoiced at his fall, and the Irish annalists do not pretend that he was much loss, except to his own tribe.[128]
No millennium follows Shane’s death.